So This is Christmas

They are The Eagles of death metal

I am excited to see the Eagles of Death Metal tonight at the Newport. I am expecting a fun, raucous show. I was doing some research on the band and found a little something I did not know on Wikipedia (is it bad that I LOVE wikipedia):

Eagles of Death Metal (EoDM) is an American band formed by Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme. Despite the name, Eagles of Death Metal is not a death metal band. Hughes in an interview with a Polish rock magazine Teraz Rock told the story of the band's name. He said that his friend, Lou, was trying to make Josh Homme like death metal. When he played Vader, Homme called them "The Eagles of death metal." Later, Josh Homme inspired him to write music that he thought would be The Eagles crossed with death metal, and their debut album was the result. In a 2003 interview Homme described the sound of the band as a combination of "bluegrass slide guitar mixed with stripper drum beats and Canned Heat vocals." Jesse Hughes is known and somewhat loved by fans for his over-enthusiastic and charismatic interaction with audiences at live performances.

Hoping to see Jesse in his true form. Will try to take pics and possibly some video. Is that legal?

Oh Christmas Tree

After not having our own Christmas tree for four years, I was convinced that I wanted to get a real live Christmas tree for our house this year. Last year we bought a tiny tree from Whole Foods that stood about one foot tall and fit on the mantle in our previous apartment. This year I wanted a full size live tree that we could replant after Christmas!

We spent most of the day last Saturday searching for an affordable live tree with a enough roots to survive a replant. After talking with several tree experts about to process of buying, moving, inviting into one's house and then replanting a live tree we felt a bit discouraged. In the end we decided to buy a cut tree. We found a charming Fraser Fir at Lowe's (not the same as a tree farm but it was the only place still selling trees at 8pm) and got it all set up and decorated in our upstairs window.

The cats were very interested in their new housemate and spent most of the evening and remainder of the weekend sniffing, chewing and battling at the tree. I thought it was harmless because my family had always had live trees at Christmas and the cats never had any harmful side affects from playing with the tree branches.

Last Wednesday Lou started not feeling so well - diarrhea, lethargic, generally just not himself. Then Hemmy over the weekend and then Oliver yesterday. I thought it may just be a stomach bug they were all passing around but after some research realized it was probably the tree making them sick. It doesn't appear to be deadly and the initial thrill of snooping around the tree is gone so hopefully this is the end of their sickness.

According to ASPCA:
Christmas tree varieties such as pine, spruce and fir contain essential oils and resins that may produce gastrointestinal irritation and minor nervous system depression if ingested in large enough quantities. Additionally, the needles could cause mechanical damage to the tissues of the mouth and gastrointestinal tract. Because cats can be much more sensitive to the effects of essential oils, it is a good idea to discourage your kitties from nibbling on your holiday tree.

Yes we did!

We did it, even Ohio! I am so excited that Ohio voted Obama this year! Feels good to be able to breathe a sign of relief after all this time.. Can't wait for January!

The Obama campaign is selling victory shirts with every $30 or more donation. Check out http://barackobama.com for more details.

Or if you would like to apply for the Obama team you can do so at www.change.gov. I think I would make a great Social Media Darling for the Obama team! Love how his camp is utilizing social media. That is what I am all about!

Now, let's go change the world!

Fired up! Ready to go!

Let's go change the world!!

Election Results from the People

Social Median is a site where people can submit news stories, sync their twitter and blog to update their social median and contribute content to themed groups. And then, similar to Digg, other members can vote on what stories they like best. Social Median is hosting an election discussion and you can track the chatter here:

http://www.socialmedian.com/network/obama-white-house-transition

Checking out Flock

I have been testing the new(er) social web brower called Flock recently. It is quite neat. You can sync up your accounts, like Facebook, twitter, Pownce, Digg, Blogger, etc to the browser to make surfing the net and updating your networks more easy. Right now I am testing out the blog editor function. Let's see where this goes!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Lazy Sunday

Just sitting here with Ian. He is messing around with his keyboard and I am trying to run my battery down before I plug the computer in. I have been convinced that this type of battery (is it lithium) loses its power/full capacity charge if it does not fully drain before being charged back up and vice verse. Ian does not agree with this theory but I have had too many computer's batteries die on me not to give it a try. So we are at 51% going for 0%..

All the kitties, except for Hemmy, are hanging out in the office with us. Lou has a water drop on his nose. That is so adorable!

We planted our mums today from the wedding and tried to pull up some more weeds. That always makes me feel like an old lady. Luckily I did not get as sore as last time, or sunburned.

We went to the Taste of Grandview today. The food was tasty and cheap. I had some steak nachos from a Mexican place but forget the name right now. Ian got some noodles from Marshall and we split some cake from Cap City. Then we both got from free Cane's. It was a nice hodgepodge. The worst part of the evening was the band that they had hired for entertainment. They were called Machfive and sucked. The could not sing or play instruments. The Rook really needs to take Columbus by force!

We got married!

Finally our cats do not have to feel like bastard children anymore. That is really the main motivation behind this marriage. That and the tax benefits. No, it is really because we are both equally strange and in love!

After a hectic few weeks before the wedding that involved deciding what dress to wear, realizing that the dress I wanted to wear needed some work, trying to get the dress ready to wear in two weeks, learning that dry cleaning is completely overrated and pointless, finding a stain remover that is simple and magical, living without electricity for a week, finding an outfit for Ian two days before the wedding, figuring out the best place to rent a keg of Blue Moon, buying enough alcohol to feed our guests, putting up signs that people could follow to get to our wedding site and finally making it to Buzzard Hill.

Luckily things turned out great! We had a great time and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. The food was great, cake was amazing, ceremony was short and sweet and we even made someone's mom cry! Now that is a successful wedding!








The wedding ceremony video.
See photos from the wedding.

The National and Obama

McCain and Palin - A Train Wreck Ticket

"...it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme."

Great Post.

I do what I want!

Wedding dress schmedding dress. My sister and I went looking for a "wedding dress" yesterday. I am not into frilly white gowns, especially for an outdoor wedding. We checked out a local store that carries used wedding dresses and nothing was really calling out to me. I have an old dress that I got from a costume shop that I may try to alter and squeeze into or check out some vintage dresses. Whatever I find it will not be a traditional wedding dress. But that is who I am!

5 Things I Have Learned About Wedding Planning

The latest blog post from Ian and Rebecca's Wedding Page

5 Things We Have Learned About Wedding Planning

(Ian and Rebecca wrote this)

We have attended four weddings this Spring/Summer and hope to learn from them all while planning for my own wedding in September. Some things we want to keep in mind are:

1. Keep it simple. Everyone has been telling us simple is better and guests will remember the experience more than the type of plate the food was served on. We hope to focus more on the experience of our celebration and making people feel comfortable rather than getting hung up on the small things.

2. Keep things moving. If the reception cannot immediately follow the ceremony try not to make people wait around for long periods of time without sufficient food and beverages to keep them entertained and fed. We are hoping to have an MC of sorts to keep our guests informed of what is happening and to tell an occasional joke or two.

3. Let people help out. Planning a wedding by oneself cannot be fun. Let friends, family members and strangers help out with the planning and implementation. The experience will be more enjoyable and less stressful for all.

4. Do it yourself. This seems to contradict #4 but it does not. If you have help with planning and implementation you may have the time to do some cooking, envelope addressing and website building on your own time to save money. Catering companies always overcharge for mediocre food (trust me I worked for one and know all their “secret” recipes - the secret is that EVERYTHING is store bought). If you can make a main dish on your own and ask family members to bring sides do it!

5. Make sure the whole experience means something to you, the couple. If you are not into churches or the formality of a traditional wedding, get married outside, at a park or in a Gazebo. Don’t recite a phrase that means nothing to you. Instead make up your own vows or invite a family member or friend to say something about you that will make the ceremony memorable and unique!

Hopefully we can follow our own advice while planning the remainder of our wedding. We are looking forward to a casual wedding celebration to close out this years’ wedding season.

Come join us!

When Ian and Rebecca Isn't Good Enough

I have been working on setting up and SEO-ing a website with information about our Wedding Celebration. If you Google Ian and Rebecca, our site is the first result!

That was too easy so now I want to be #1 for Ian Rebecca. And ultimately for just Ian / Rebecca separately. So here goes...

Visit Ian and Rebecca's Wedding Page!

Ian and Rebecca's Wedding Page

I started a website for wedding information at http://ianandrebecca.webbedmarketing.com.

Check it out! I am trying to optimize it for Ian and Rebecca's Wedding Page. There seem to be lots of other Ian and Rebecca's getting married who also have pages. Theirs are not optimized and they are not pretty. So in a few days I hope to see our Ian and Rebecca's Wedding Page at the top of the search results (and not this blog post). So give me some link bait at:

Ian and Rebecca's Wedding Page

My love-hate relationship with

Thursday night, sitting alone, trying to do some work but unable to convert a pdf to doc format. So I have given up. Avoiding starting something that requires more brainpower than I am willing to use right now.

Ian is at a bachelor party dinner with some friends. His dad is playing at On The Rocks tonight and we may stop in. Truthfully I could go to sleep right now. Not really in the mood to be out late. This week has been exhausting. At least Friday is tomorrow.

Now to post about the perils of UA road construction.

Lazy Friday

We are enjoying the long Holiday weekend so far. I had a WM team meeting yesterday and have a slight headache and general bad feeling from too much Blue Moon. Beer bad.. Other than that it was a good meeting and Q2 wrap up/Q3 kick off.

We should be heading to a friend's house for 4th of July festivities but still have not confirmed a time of arrival. I don't feel much like celebrating anymore today. Wish I could flip a switch and the feeling would be gone. But nothing is that easy.

So the house is still great. Lots of work. We are still combating the weed problem in the back yard but seem to finally have the upper hand. There are still some problem areas around the house in the flower gardens. All considering things looks pretty good. We would love to build a carport/garage/storage area/patio onto the side of the house. I think that will be our first major project. We will not be doing the building ourselves, of course, because we want the structure to remain standing for years, but hope to find a suitable building team to help us out. My dad should have some suggestions since he has done this so many times. After that a bathroom rehab would be nice. And maybe sprucing up the kitchen and basement next. But more of a garage space is definitely a priority right now. The make-shift shed someone erected in the past that is too narrow to hold the lawn mower and requires way too much organized cramming of junk is just not going to cut it!

Well the Excedrin seems to be kicking in and hopefully the clouds will clear up enough to permit a bike ride, walk or other outdoor activity. Until then, the couch is my friend.

How sweet to be a Cloud

I have been reading up on my Pooh lately and am really enjoying this ditty from ...in which we are introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and some bees, and the stories begin.

How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!
Every little cloud
Always sings aloud.
"How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!"
It makes him very proud
To be a little cloud.

Especially after Bush's beehive theory.. you never can tell with bees.

I am taking Dylan to see a Homeopathic vet this week. I am not totally taking him off the traditional medication MedVet prescribes but I want to see if there is something more natural and safe I could be doing for him. I would like to not have to give him an inhaler anymore. I am all about anything that talks about a complete approach to a "cure" rather than just treating symptoms to make the animal more comfortable basically until they die. So we have a reevaluation with MedVet on Thursday and then the appointment with the Holistic vet on Friday. Poor Dylan! He is such a trooper!

Just Click the Link

Seriously, why haven't you clicked the link yet???

Its'a Wii Mario Kart

Mario Kart Wii Online Review

I have never been one to enjoy playing video games online. This is due to things such as:

1) I am horrible at first person shooters

2) When playing sports games people always pick the best teams while I pick my favorite team.

3) People exploit mistakes in the game to beat you.

etc. etc. etc.

Then why is it that I am enjoying playing Mario Kart for the Wii online so much?!? I think the basic premise is that Mario Kart is designed to even out the playing field. For those not familiar with the basic rules of Mario Kart I will explain. It is your basic racing video game except that you play as one of the many characters from the Nintendo universe. You also are able to run across boxes that give you certain items that you can use against the other racers to better your position. The worse your position is the better weapon you can get to fire at the other racers. So someone in 12th place will get something that can do a lot of damage and the person in 1st place can hardly do anything to the other racers. This gives you the false sense that you are always able to win.

Last night I was racing 11 other people and kept falling off the sides of the track. About 20 seconds from the end of the track I am in last place. I managed to get the bullet item which turns your cart into a bullet, makes you go really fast and controls all steering for you. I managed to jump all the way to 5th.

Even though I did not come close to winning I still had fun. That is the beauty of Mario Kart when you play online. You may not win, but chances are you will get the satisfaction of screwing over a bunch of people at the last second.

Now I will let you know how GTAIV is once I get ahold of a copy.

Is it me or are you just stupid?

Either we surround ourselves with really unintelligent people are we are just trusting first time home buyers. I had been trying to make the first payment on our mortgage and the money was not being taken out of my account. So I called the bank to ask what the deal was. They assured me that they had the check and that the money would still be credited towards our loan. About a week later our mortgage guy called asking why we had not made a payment. So it looks like the title company had given us the wrong property tax information and we needed to pay $130 extra from what we had been told. FUCKERS!

Buying a house definitely has its perks but I cannot say I would recommend anyone we worked with to our friends, except our realtor. Things really should not be this hard!

Louie is napping on my lap. He is a sweetie and doesn't smell like constant poo like his brother. Dylan has been doing really well with his meds. He goes back for a cardio checkup on Thursday. Hopefully things will have improved or at least not look terrible. He also does not have a fever as far as we can tell. Silly doctors...

Sleepy Lou

This is cool!

This is a new offer from Revolution Money Exchange. They have free money exchanges, better than Paypal. And if you sign up now you automatically get $25. Do it!

The cat came back

This little ditty is inspired by the Unadmirable Painters.

But the painters came back the very next day,
The painters came back, we thought they were all done
But the painters came back; they just couldn't stay away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

It only makes sense that after we are almost all finished picking up paint chips, that should never have been thrown on the ground in the first place, that the painters would return to do more damage. The appraiser wanted the "window wells" to be painted and they interpreted that as the basement windows, but was actually the upstairs windows. Luckily it was a quick project and now our windows upstairs are not chipping, so no (well not NO) complaints here. Now we just need to finish picking up the rest of the pink paint chips and lay down more mulch. We should get out money soon!

Need a band?

Trying to plan your next event?  Need a kick ass band who will play for cheap.  I give you Johnny Rook  We are trying to get our summer schedule set so if you know anyone who needs a band let me know!

Landscaping

We took advantage of the gorgeous spring weather and did some landscaping yesterday. Since our painters are lazy we have to pick up a ton of paint chips which is proving to be impossible after 4 weeks, a blizzard, wind storms and rain. So we got some wood chips to try to cover up the rest of the paint. It looks nice too! We also are putting some stone along the driveway beside the house. And I planted flowers!

Then we settled in for some relaxation and for HGTV to tell us the 25 worst landscaping mistakes. GREAT! Luckily our decisions were not among them. So now we know what not to do when landscaping.

Dylan

Dylobee lives in a tree eating bees. Not really but I just wanted to have a tag for Dylan!

Band Practice

New house color!

Pink House No More!

The painters are here! The painters are here! After living with a pink house for two weeks, our house is finally being painted a luxurious Rustic Red. I am so thrilled by this and excited to see the final product but am currently trapped inside the house. The doors have plastic and tape over them so I cannot get out! What a joke...

This color will surely be more pleasing for our neighbors but maybe less easy to find by our adventurous friends.

Pictures as soon as I can get out!

As promised a Gumballhead review

Wow not what I was expecting at all.  This beer is very hoppy for the style and it took me by surprise.  All in all though it finishes nicely and is very drinkable.  I would give it a solid B.  If it were available in Ohio I would probably pick it up occasionally, but since it isn't,  I don't think it is worth the trouble of trading for.

Free at last!

Well after a little mixup with the Google spam filter we are now back up and running!  I managed to get ahold of a six pack of Three Floyds Gumballhead.  I am hoping that this hyped up beer turns out better than the last hyped up beer I tried (can you say Oberated anyone?).  I know I am in for a treat either way because it is an American Pale Wheat Ale.  For those of you who do not drink beer I strongly suggest starting with the wheat ales.  Blue Moon is the most popular and readily available but, if you really want a treat pick up a six pack of  Sam Adams White Ale .  I will post a review with pics later!

Cat bath

Today as I was about to head out the door to wash an oversized comforter Lou comes running through the living room, poo dangling from his rear. I am a tidy person and the thought of where that poo would end up if I did not clean him before I left was haunting. So after chasing the cat around for a bit I coral him in the bathroom and get my trusty wet wipes (these things aren't just for baby butts). I manage to grab the dangle but that was not the main problem. In Lou's pitiful attempts to remove the dangle himself he had squished more poo into his tail hair. When I realized this was going to require more than a wet wipe I took off my jacket because I wouldn't want that to get wet. I have the cat in the bathtub thinking the detachable sprayer with the hose will work so well for bathing a cat... right! My mind has blocked out the exact details but I do remember the shower head spraying water farther and in directions I was not expecting and Lou trying to flee the scene. I did manage to clean off the poo but in the process almost completely soaked poor Lou and myself. After this shameful experience Lou was a bit upset to say the least. Rest assured his brothers were there to console him and help him dry off and cuddle by the window to bird watch. Two hours later, he is dry and happy again and smells quite nice!